


Why Us?

by Okadiah



Series: Symbrock Thanos Snap Quartet [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Angst, Here's round four, I'm Sorry, Minor Character Death, The Thanos Snap, Venom/MCU Crossover, you know what's coming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 13:30:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16833574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Okadiah/pseuds/Okadiah
Summary: Thanos snapped, and no one was left unaffected. Not even Eddie and Venom.Version 4





	Why Us?

**Author's Note:**

> And finally we've arrived at the final version of the quartet. I know, it's been hard, but it's just one more round and at the end I promise I have news about something special that I think you'll like for making it through. Anyway, here's version 4. I hope you enjoy!

"Hey, Mrs. Chen," Eddie said absentmindedly as he walked through the door, the bell ringing to announce them. He was on the phone with Anne, who wanted more details for the case she was making against what was left of the Life Foundation while Venom created a tentacle so he could talk to Mrs. Chen.

"You boys are early," Mrs. Chen said. "The tots shipment hasn't come in yet."

**"But you said today."**

"And today's not over, is it?"

Eddie shook his head and ignored their conversation, which was usually easier said than done. With his and Venom’s telepathic link it was difficult to tune out Venom's conversation while listening to Anne at the same time, although he did his best. She was trying to get justice for the people who had died in experimentation throughout all of Drake's projects, not just the symbiotes, and Eddie was eager to help in whatever way he could.

"You sure you haven't been able to dig anything else up?" Anne asked over the phone. "I've got a pretty strong case so far, but anything to make it that much stronger will go a long way toward making sure nothing like this ever happens again."

"I've been looking around, and there might be something, actually,” Eddie said. “Vee and I are about to see what we can churn up this afternoon. I’d call then."

"Yeah, let me know." A murmur of someone in the background fluttered through the line and Anne said, "Oh, also, Dan wants to know how those phenethylamine pills have been working for you?"

"They've been a godsend," Eddie said with a chuckle as he reached for a bag of potato chips. "For once I don't _have_ to eat chocolate. I can just take a pill. It's great!"

**"No, it's not,"** Venom said, turning from his conversation with Mrs. Chen to drop in on Eddie’s and Anne's. **"I _like_ chocolate."**

"Yeah, but it doesn’t have to be breakfast, lunch, and dinner now. Neither do heads for that matter."

"Heads?" Mrs. Chen said, arching an eyebrow before eyeing Venom. "Really?"

**"Is everyone going to criticize what I eat?"**

"You eat people. You make _me_ eat them too, by the way," Eddie grunted before Anne's voice lifted at his ear. "And you made Anne. She's still not over it, she wants me to tell you that."

"And don't you ever make me do that again," Anne said firmly through the phone before adding a little more quietly, "I still remember how it tasted."

Eddie made a face because he knew that even if Venom ever left him and he never had to eat another head again, he'd remember the taste of it and the way it sent pleasing sparks down his and Venom's spine until the day he died. And he never liked to think too hard on that.

**"You say that, but you liked it. I know you did,"** Venom said. **"Just like I know deep down that Eddie likes it too."**

Mrs. Chen made a face. "Really, Eddie?"

"It's Venom! It's all Venom," Eddie snapped, glaring at his alien before Venom moved closer to Eddie, hiding inside his hoodie as the door swung open with a gentle chime. Another of Mrs. Chen's regulars walked in with a wave and smile.

"Hi, Mrs. Chen."

"Hello, Vivian."

Within the shelter of Eddie's coat Venom frowned and waited until it was safe to come out again. Eddie put his items on the counter as Anne spoke.

"Anyway, Eddie, I'd better let you go then. Dan and I are about to grab lunch, but I should be up later this evening with the work and—"

"Vivian?"

The surprise in Mrs. Chen's voice snagged Eddie’s attention, and both he and Venom looked at the spot where Mrs. Chen was heading. She'd already left her place behind the counter, but when she stopped in the aisle Vivian had been all they saw was a pile of dust heaped on the floor.

Mrs. Chen glanced at them.

"Where did she—?"

The panicked tone in Anne's voice tore at his attention.

"Dan?" Anne suddenly said. "Dan, what's—?"

**"Mrs. Chen!"**

Alarm flashed through Venom and into Eddie, and Eddie was pulled between shouts. His eyes lifted and to his shock he saw that Mrs. Chen had gone gray. Unnaturally gray. She looked at them in confusion.

"Boys—"

Both Eddie and Venom stared, motionless and numb as Mrs. Chen fell apart before their eyes, turning to dust that shifted ever so gently on the AC’s breeze. Venom was the first to respond, voice hollow.

**"Mrs. Chen?"**

"Eddie!"

Eddie's attention jerked back into focus, his heart pounding as outside the store he heard the squeal of tires, honk of horns, screams. But they were nowhere near as terrifying as the sounds coming out of his phone.

"Anne?" Eddie barked, clenching the phone tight in his hand as his body went cold. "Anne, what's wrong? Is Dan okay? Are you okay?"

**"Eddie,"** Venom said after investigating the spot Mrs. Chen had been and now abruptly _wasn't_. The cold creep of fear was nipping at the symbiote. **"She's—"**

"I don't know-Eddie, something-something's happening! Dan, he lost color and then turned to dust, and now I’m losing color and—"

A soft gasp slipped from the other end of the line, Anne's voice abruptly cutting off, and Eddie listened to the clatter and rattle of motion and static until it finally stopped. In the background, Eddie could hear more screaming, more yelling, more stomach-clenching chaos.

But he couldn't hear Anne.

"Anne?" he said before anxiety flooded his voice. "Anne! Anne, talk to me! Anne, are you there? Anne!"

**"Eddie!"**

Terror rising in his throat, Eddie looked up where Venom was peering outside through the window, and he sprinted to join him. Out under the brilliant blue sky, people were yelling, cars attempted to pull over and accidentally crashed instead. One such car opened and a man stumbled out, and they watched as, like Mrs. Chen, he collapsed into a pile of dust the wind stole away. They burst out of the store, trying to understand what was going on, but it didn't make sense. The phone connection between him and Anne died and Eddie’s throat squeezed.

Anne. Had whatever this was gotten Anne too?

**"What's going on, Eddie?"** Venom demanded, fear morphing into rage as more of the symbiote's black mass rose to the surface of Eddie's skin like a snake coiling around something precious. As if his presence might ward off an impending attack. " **What's happening?"**

"I don't know!" Eddie exclaimed, glancing back at Mrs. Chen’s store before dashing down the road. He tried Anne's number again, but it went straight to voicemail, and then he tried Dan's with the same effect. "I don't know!"

Now that they were outside they could see more and more people turning to dust while others appeared completely untouched by this strange plague. The reporter in him was trying to quickly piece it all together. Venom's attention, on the other hand, was zeroed entirely on _them_. Prepared to react to an attack, large or small, and that intensity reminded Eddie that it wasn't just everyone else in danger, but probably themselves as well.

Panic arched within him as he stared at his hands, one of them completely encased by Venom’s protective goo.

"Vee?"

**"Nothing,"** Venom replied to the loaded question. **"I feel nothing!"**

If anyone was going to know if something was happening with Eddie’s body, it was Venom, but the alien’s monitoring meant as little to him as it did to Venom himself. Whatever was happening was something not even Venom had experienced before, and he was an alien!

All either of them could do was wait. Wait and see if what had happened to Mrs. Chen, and Dan, and probably Anne would happen to them too.

Eddie stared at the familiar color of his shaking hands, expecting them to fade. Looking for signs of the same disintegration that overcame almost everyone else. Was it happening only to San Francisco? Was it happening across the country? Across the world?

But nothing happened. Venom's black mass curled around his flesh, and neither bleached out. Neither flaked or faded away. Whatever it was, it wasn't affecting them. Just everyone else.

"Why us?" Eddie breathed, his voice faint and filled with disbelief. His hands shook harder. "Venom?

**“I don't know, Eddie,”** Venom said before his voice grew firm. **“But now's not the time.”**

"What?"

That was all Eddie had time to say before Venom fully masked him. They jumped and reached just in time to stop an old man from getting crushed by a runaway car. With motion at his fingertips, Eddie focused and a tentacle swept the car up and overturned it so it rested on its hood, the wheels spinning endlessly.

There was no one inside.

**"Get to safety,"** they told the old man after they set him down.

"But my daughter, and my grandson," the old man babbled. "They were-I was just." He swallowed and stared up at them not with fear or panic at talking to an alien monster, but with desperation and dread. "They're gone."

They couldn't respond. There wasn't time. Another car blazed past, only this time there was no driver but there _was_ a car seat in the back and they were moving before their next heartbeat. They carefully swept the infant out of the seat and overturned this car too. By then the street was filling with terrorized people, each screaming and shouting about people they'd lost. That they needed help. That it was happening everywhere.

They landed and a policewoman ran toward them, eyes wide.

"Do you know what's going on?"

**"No,"** they said before depositing the screaming baby in her arms. **"Help them. We'll save who we can."**

"But—!"

They were gone before she could say another word, soaring through the air as adrenaline overwhelmed the horror of the situation, completely replacing thought with the necessity of action if they were going to save everyone they could. Fires had erupted across the city, alarms wailed, people were still screaming, and it was nothing but pure chaos everywhere they looked. Chaos that needed them to make sure whoever was left survived to endure whatever came next.

But as they worked tirelessly, extracting people from buildings, enduring fires, getting children who’d lost parents into what police custody remained and preventing any enterprising assholes from taking advantage of the situation, one thing kept circling in their shared minds. It circled over and over as their muscles grew tired, their hunger mounted, and they struggled with the overwhelming realization that this was _real_. And that there was so much to do.

_Why us?_

Why them and not Anne, who would know better what to do in a situation like this? Why them and not Dan, who was a doctor who could have saved half the lives he and Venom couldn't save? Why them and not Mrs. Chen, whose well-known presence in the community would have helped stabilize and organize what little remained?

Instead, what was left was them, and the never-ending question of why us, why us, why us?

**Author's Note:**

> So here we are, at the end. Only I have that special something to tell you, and it's that I've got one more tiny little thing to add to this quartet, but don't worry. Yes. There will be someone who'll die, but he's big and purple and the source of all this angst. I'll be posting that little treasure here in a day or two. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
